I'm wondering if anyone has any useful analogies to describe what DNS is versus hosting. The average user "just wants a website" and sees it as one atomic unit. To be fair it is possible to buy it like this from some companies but in some situations it's not...
What is the best way that you have found to explain that to end users in such a way that they can comprehend it?
The closest I've got to it is:
View DNS as being like looking up a telephone directory for someone’s number. This tells your browser where to go to get the website.
Hosting is where you pay for space on a server owned by someone else, typically in a data centre. This allows you to store the files such as images, pages and so forth on this server and is typically subject to a quota.
I thought about using the rent-a-space type analogy but that might not work with some users.